Have you been to Valinor lately? - Page 3
© Michael Martinez
What should the Dark Marches be that the Elves of Faery must venture out in their white ships upon the Sea of Windless Storm? The battles they wage there are unknown to men, undocumented and uncelebrated, except in brief glimpses in stories like "Smith".
Smith wanders through Faery and has encounter after encounter. The land is enchanted but it is natural and not so much mysterious as simply different. He finds the Inner Mountains and eventually the Vale of Evermorn, the heart of Faery, where the land is richer and more vibrant than anything in mortal experience. There he dances with the Queen of Faery, who years later tells him, when he recalls the little figure on the cake for the Feast of Twenty-four which was meant to represent her, "Better a little doll, maybe, than no memory of Faery at all."
That is the way Faery, or Valinor, is remembered. As Frodo sails toward Tol Eressea he sees "white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise". Resembling the dream he had had in Bombadil's house, the vision is the only glimpse of far Aman, the Blessed Land, in The Lord of the Rings. But it's not the only glimpse for readers of Tolkien.
Besides Smith of Wootton Major there is also Roverandom. Roverandom is a small metal dog who is given life by a wizard. The story is based on a toy one of Tolkien's sons lost, but it follows the author's purest flights of fancy as he wanders to the moon and back in a fashion that even the Elves would envy. In his merry (and some not-so-merry) adventures the enchanted dog finds himself visiting the Mer-folk under the sea. Roverandom is befriended by another enchanted dog, Rover, and together they go traveling with an ancient whale, old Uin. One day, Uin takes them farther than ever before:
Another time he took them to the other side (or as near as he dared), and that was a still longer and more exciting journey, the most marvellous of all Roverandom's travels, as he realised later, when he was grown to be an older and a wiser dog. It would take the whole of another story, at least, to tell you of all their adventures in Uncharted Waters and of their glimpses of lands unknown to geography, before they passed the Shadowy Seas and reached the great Bay of Fairyland (as we call it) beyond the Magic Isles; and saw far off in the last West the Mountains of Elvenhome and the light of Faery upon the waves. Roverandom thought he caught a glimpse of the city of the Elves on the green hill beneath the Mountains, a glint of white far away; but Uin dived again so suddenly that he could not be sure. If he was right, he was one of very few creatures, on two legs or four, who can walk about our own lands and say they have glimpsed that other land, however far away.
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